Ghosts of Bannerman’s Island

Beacon, NY—Just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge lays a
mysteriously isolated island and on this island stands the ruin of a
once grand Scottish Castle, which in its time, stood as a fortress and
rose above the trees to create an impressive gateway to the Hudson
Highlands. This is the image I remember as I child, and I am still
captivated by the menacing vision of this dark lifeless structure
surrounded by the rushing tides of the Hudson River. Today this majestic
ruin, known as Bannerman’s Island Arsenal, rests on Pollepel
Island and crumbles before our eyes. The recent deterioration of
the ruin inspired me to not only witness and photograph the devastation,
but to write about its lingering legends.

Pollepel Island was just as mystifying nearly 400 years ago as it is
today. This dark deserted isle was the subject of an impressive
“arsenal” of storytellers’ tales. Storytelling was a common past time
and, just as with any story, over time these tales were naturally
embellished and grew into astounding historical accounts that were
passed down by the area’s early inhabitants giving us the great early
legends of angry spirits, lost lovers, and ghostly goblins.

The Early Legends

Long before Francis Bannerman built his castle, this six and
three quarter acre isle was uninhabited. The Native Americans feared the
island was possessed by evil spirits, which made it a prime location
for settlers to hide during periods of aggression with the Indians.
Over time, a number of legendary tales evolved. As I walked along the
shoreline, the crystalline ice formations glistened in the sun and I
thought of the legend of Polly Pell, a story that stakes claim for
naming the island. The story of Polly Pell (Pollepel) was shared among
Dutch settlers when newlywed Polly Pell was saved from the frozen Hudson
River following a romantic sleigh ride with her beau. The fierce
currents of the icy Hudson washed Polly and her new husband up on the
rocky shores when a slave rescued them and named the island after her
and the legend of Polly Pell was born.

The infamous Pollepel Island became well-known among Hudson River
sailors. The secluded island was the basis of much of fantastical
folklore that surrounds river travel through the Hudson Highlands.
The story The Storm-Ship written by famed storyteller and
Tarrytown resident Washington Irving, tells the tale of a dreaded tribe
of goblins that the Dutch feared inhabited Pollepel Island. These
goblins thrived under the reign of the Heer of Dunderburgh who is said
to control the gusty winds and treacherous waters of the Highlands. The
Dutch lived in fear of the Dunderburgh. The “storm ship”’ actually
refers to the legendary Flying Dutchman, a ship lost in a brutal storm
sinking just south of Pollepel Island. The story condemns the captain
and his crew to sailing the Hudson for eternity and it has been reported
that their cries for help can be heard during violent storms. Once a
ship ventured past Pollepel Island, the captain and crew earned right of
passage for a safe journey down the Hudson.

Whether or not the ghosts, goblins, and evil spirits existed was left
to the imagination. However, boat captains were known to cast off new
sailors on their inaugural voyages down the river as an initiation.
Often drunk and scared out of their wits these poor sailors were forced
to disembark to take their chances with the phantoms of Pollepel Island.
They were picked up on the return trip hopefully sobered up and
fearless.

Given the history of Pollepel’s influence on shipmen of that period,
it is ironic that the next ghost story would be that of a tugboat
captain angered by Bannerman himself.

A Ghost from the Bannerman Era

Francis Bannerman VI was the visionary behind the progressive growth
of the Scottish castle that bears the name of Bannerman’s Island
Arsenal. Bannerman purchased Pollepel Island in 1900 when his
insatiable hobby of scrap collecting gave way to becoming a massive arms
company. As his wealth increased, Bannerman was able to build a home
that would serve as a monument to his heritage. The castle itself was
comprised of six major sections; three arsenals, the lodge, the tower,
and the superintendent’s house. In addition, there is also a family
residence with magnificent views of the Highlands.

The property was protected by breakwaters, which were formed by the
sinking of old barges and boats. There is a legendary tale that the
tugboat captain of one of the boats requested that his prized vessel not
be sunk in his presence, but before anyone knew it, the boat was
sinking right before the former captains eyes. The captain cursed
Bannerman and swore revenge. It has been said that employees in the
lodge often heard the ringing of the boat’s bell at various times
signifying that the captain had returned to make good on his promise.

Just as the tugboat captain experienced a devastating loss that would
condemn him to Bannerman’s castle for an eternity, Bannerman would also
experience loss.

A Castle in Ruin

Bannerman’s Island Arsenal has had its share of disastrous events. A
1920 explosion of gun powder and shells blew a wall clear over to the
mainland. Three people were injured including Mrs. Bannerman and the
incident incurred $50,000 in damage. The most devastating event occurred
in August of 1969 in a fire that gutted all the buildings on the
island. It was undetermined as to what was the cause of the engulfing
blaze that would destroy the celebrated estate of the late Francis
Bannerman VI leaving it in ruin. This would not be the last disastrous
event that the castle would endure. In late 2009 and early 2010 the
castle saw increased damage that has forever changed the landscape of
this iconic structure. I wonder how much longer it will endure the
elements and how this rich haunted history will be remembered.

Remembering Bannerman’s Island Arsenal

The recent collapses have removed Bannerman’s name from his cherished
castle. As the castle fades into history, the legends will remain to
haunt us for a lifetime. As unbelievable as the stories may be, they add
to the allure of the island and someday may be all that remains of one
of the most captivating historical sites in the Hudson Valley. I think
that Jane Bannerman’s quote best describes how I feel about Polly Pell’s
island.

“No one can tell what associations and incidents will involve the island in the future. Time, the elements, and maybe even the goblins of the island will take their toll of some of the turrets and towers, and perhaps eventually the castle itself, but the little island will always have it’s place in history and in legend and will be forever a jewel in it’s Hudson Highland setting.”

– Jane Bannerman

Island Tours and Contributions

The island and castle is easily viewed from land. Take a short drive
south on Route 9D until you get to Breakneck Ridge. Park on the side of
the road and cross the bridge over the trains track. BE VERY CAREFUL OF
PASSING TRAINS!!

A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.

Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

In modern times the region has been occupied by Turkish-speaking Uighurs, joined in the last 50 years by Han settlers from China. Ethnic tensions have recently arisen between the two groups, with riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. A large number of ancient mummies, really desiccated corpses, have emerged from the sands, only to become pawns between the Uighurs and the Han.

The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.

The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin. Carbon tests done at Beijing University show that the oldest part dates to 3,980 years ago. A team of Chinese geneticists has analyzed the mummies’ DNA.

Despite the political tensions over the mummies’ origin, the Chinese said in a report published last month in the journal BMC Biology that the people were of mixed ancestry, having both European and some Siberian genetic markers, and probably came from outside China. The team was led by Hui Zhou of Jilin University in Changchun, with Dr. Jin as a co-author.

All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.

The Small River Cemetery was rediscovered in 1934 by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman and then forgotten for 66 years until relocated through GPS navigation by a Chinese expedition. Archaeologists began excavating it from 2003 to 2005. Their reports have been translated and summarized by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in the prehistory of the Tarim Basin.

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

At the foot of each pole there were indeed boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. A Bronze Age salesclerk from Victoria’s Secret seems to have supplied the clothes beneath — barely adequate woolen loin cloths for the men, and skirts made of string strands for the women.

Within each boat coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.

In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.

The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance the community attached to fertility.

Arthur Wolf, an anthropologist at Stanford University and an expert on fertility in East Asia, said that the poles perhaps mark social status, a common theme of tombs and grave goods. “It seems that what most people want to take with them is their status, if it is anything to brag about,” he said.

Dr. Mair said the Chinese archaeologists’ interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols was “a believable analysis.” The buried people’s evident veneration of procreation could mean they were interested in both the pleasure of sex and its utility, given that it is difficult to separate the two. But they seem to have had particular respect for fertility, Dr. Mair said, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.

Living in harsh surroundings, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great,” Dr. Mair said. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become in-bred. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have been particularly revered,” Dr. Mair said.

Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe, Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe.

There are no known settlements near the cemetery, so the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the cemetery by boat. No woodworking tools have been found at the site, supporting the idea that the poles were carved off site.

The Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River people entered it 4,000 years ago. They probably lived at the edge of survival until the lakes and rivers on which they depended finally dried up around A.D. 400. Burials with felt hats and woven baskets were common in the region until some 2,000 years ago.

The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but Dr. Mair believes it could have been Tokharian, an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages. Manuscripts written in Tokharian have been discovered in the Tarim Basin, where the language was spoken from about A.D. 500 to 900. Despite its presence in the east, Tokharian seems more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran. The division is based on the words for hundred in Latin (centum) and in Sanskrit (satam).

The Small River Cemetery people lived more than 2,000 years before the earliest evidence for Tokharian, but there is “a clear continuity of culture,” Dr. Mair said, in the form of people being buried with felt hats, a tradition that continued until the first few centuries A.D.

An exhibition of the Tarim Basin mummies opens March 27 at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif. — the first time that the mummies will be seen outside Asia.

Mystic girl of Gwrych Castle

A company boss Kevin Horkin was taken pictures at Gwrych Castle in Abergele, North Wales and may have captured a picture of a spirit.

Kevin didn’t notice anything unusual until he downloaded the pictures to his PC. In one of the photos was the image of a pale young woman looking out a window.

Amazingly, it’s impossible for anyone to stand at that particular window because the floor in the room is completely destroyed.

North Wales Paranormal group have confirmed that many sightings have been recorded at the castle.

Local history claims that the first castle at Gwrych was built by the Normans in the 12th century. It was seized by the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd (the Lord Rhys) of Deheubarth in about 1170 who then rebuilt the timber castle in stone. This castle was later destroyed by Cromwell’s army following the English Civil War of the mid-17th century.

The later castle at Gwrych was begun in 1819. The castle is a Grade 1 listed building set in a wooded hillside overlooking the Irish Sea.

It was the first Gothic folly to be built in Europe by a wealthy industrialist Lloyd Hesketh. Bamford Hesketh, his son, inherited the title of Gwrych in his early 20s and used his vast fortune to build the 4,000-acre Gwrych Castle Estate.

The castle once had a total of 128 rooms including the outbuildings, including twenty-eight bedrooms, an outer hall, an inner hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, a billiards room, an oak study, and a range of accommodations for servants.

There are nineteen embattled towers and the whole facade is over 2000 yards. Many feel the castle’s outstanding feature was the castle’s 52-step marble staircase.

THE HISTORY OF GWRYCH CASTLE

Local history claims that the first castle at Gwrych was built by the Normans in the 12th century. It was seized by the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd (the Lord Rhys) of Deheubarth in about 1170 who then rebuilt the timber castle in stone. This castle was later destroyed by Cromwell’s army following the English Civil War of the mid-17th century.

The later castle at Gwrych was begun in 1819. The castle is a Grade 1 listed building set in a wooded hillside over looking the Irish Sea. It was the first Gothic folly to be built in Europe by a wealthy industrialist Lloyd Hesketh. Bamford Hesketh, his son, inherited the title of Gwrych in his early 20s and used his vast fortune to build the 4,000-acre Gwrych Castle Estate.

The castle once had a total of 128 rooms including the outbuildings, including twenty-eight bedrooms, an outer hall, an inner hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, a billiards room, an oak study, and a range of accommodations for servants. There are nineteen embattled towers and the whole facade is over 2000 yards. Many feel the castle’s outstanding feature was the castle’s 52-step marble staircase.

Queen Victoria stayed at Gwrych in 1932 in what is now known as the Victoria bedroom. These rooms are situated in the front of the castle in the round tower on the first floor, with two windows overlooking the Irish Sea.

In 1946 The castle was sold and then it passed through subsequent owners and is now derelict. All of the windows are cast iron and the fantastic stained glass has vanished. It’s been years since the castle’s been occupied. Years ago they used to hold medieval fairs and the like on the grounds of the castle.

The castle was bought several years ago by an American businessman who planned to spend 10 million pounds to convert the castle into a top-class opera house with adjoining luxury hotel. But those plans never materialized and the building was frequently vandalized. Unfortunately, in early 1998 Gwrych was extensively damaged following the collapse of ceilings and floors, and was later damaged by fire.

The Mackie Haunting

By now it must be clear to you that not all hauntings are benign. They can sometimes – although rarely – be far more physical and threatening than a fleeting shadow drawn by Casper the Friendly Ghost.

What took place at the Mackie farmhouse beginning in February, 1695, for example, is one of the most active and violent poltergeist cases on record. I was also well documented, having been witnessed and experienced by more than a dozen upstanding members of this Scottish community. Andrew Mackie, described by neighbors as “honest, civil and harmless,” lived in the modest farmhouse with his wife and children. The property had been known to be haunted, but the Mackies experienced nothing out of the ordinary there… until that February.

The attack on the Mackies began with an assault of stones and other objects, thrown by some invisible force.

Life does not make sense. Is there a reason for living? Maybe…
Several family members were struck and injured by the missiles. The family sought the counsel of Alexander Telfair, the parish minister, who upon arrival experienced first-hand the bewildering phenomena. Whatever the entity was, it “molested me mightily,” Telfair said, “threw stones and divers other things at me, and beat me several times on the Shoulders and Sides with a great Staff, so that those who were present heard the noise of the Blows.”

The hateful presence was unrelenting. The Mackies testified that it attacked their children one night in their beds, delivering forceful spankings. More than once “it would drag People about their House by their Clothes,” an investigation described. A blacksmith narrowly escaped death when a trough and plowshare were hurled at him. Small buildings on the property spontaneously burst into flames and burned to cinders. During a family prayer meeting, chunks of flaming peat pelted them. A human shape, seemingly made out of cloth, appeared, groaning, “Hush… hush.”

This being the late 17th century, the Mackies were quick to attribute the phenomena to demons. On April 9, Andrew Mackie enlisted no less than five ministers to exorcize the farmhouse of the demonic spirits. But the ministers were to have their hands full throughout the ritual. Stones hailed down on them. A few of the minister, including Telfair, claimed that something had grabbed them by the legs or feet and lifted them into the air. The clergymen were not willing to yield victory to the entity, however, continuing their exorcism efforts for more than two weeks. Then on Friday, April 26, a voice from the invisible specter declared to them, “Thou shalt be troubled ’till Tuesday.”

When that day arrived, the witnesses watched in astonishment as a dark, cloud-like shape formed in the corner of the Mackies’ barn. As they stared, the cloud grew larger and blacker until it nearly filled the entire building. Blobs of mud flew out of the cloud into the faces of the witnesses. Some were gripped by some vice-like force. And then… it vanished, just as it promised it would.

Ouija boards

Ouija boards, also known as talking boards, have been in use for hundreds, if not thousands of years in one form or another. The most clear examples are talking boards widely used during seances during the hay day of the Spiritualism movement during the early part of the 20th century.

In modern times Ouija boards find themselves at the heart of investigations into what are called “negative entities” or “demons”. Modern folk lore points to Ouija boards as being at the beginning of most manifestations of “demons” into the lives of those foolish enough to make use of them.

Talking boards have been debunked as early as the 1970’s by paranormal investigators. Investigators created their own board, randomly shuffling the letters and numbers and asked groups of psychics to ask questions of these boards while they were unable to see the letters being indicated. The answers produced during those experiments were always random orders of letters.

It is believed that the indicator of a Ouija board is moved either consciously or unconsciously by one of the operators in the group who is acting as the dominant controller of the indicator. The controller may or may not be aware that they are controlling the answer although answers that come into their head either through intuition or actual knowledge of the subject matter being asked then appears through the indicator. Operators who have read extensively may have knowledge about a subject in vast detail which they are not even aware of on a conscious level and may be tapping into that knowledge during the use of a Ouija board.

Proponents of the popular resurgence of talking boards in the 21st century claim that some of the answers given by spirits during the use of these boards are impossible to gain other than through direct knowledge of the spirit being contacted.

Some practitioners of the occult believe that talking boards create the potential for problems and attribute them as a cause for negative entities because the boards work as the focus for a summoning ritual but provide no protection for the participants and do not provide any instruction or means for banishing the entity summoned after the ritual is successful.

Wherever the truth resides in all of these claims it is clear that some users of talking boards continue to receive answers to their questions and are frightening themselves when this occurs. If you are thinking of using a talking board for fun with a group of friends, my advice is to leave well enough alone. Don’t go looking into the world of the human unconscious or ghosts unless you are ready to confront whatever might be staring back at you.

The History

What is a Ouija board? Ouija boards came into existence as a parlor game in the mid-1800’s, when spiritism and channeling were at the height of fashion. The word “Ouija” is a blend of the French and German words for “yes.” Adolphus Theodore Wagner first patented Ouija boards, sometimes referred to as “talking boards,” in London, England on January 23, 1854. In the patent, Wagner called his invention a “psychograph” and its purpose was to read the minds of people with “nervous energy.” By 1861, Frenchman, Allan Kardac, was describing the Ouija board as instruments with which to open communications with the spirit world. In seven short years, the Ouija board had evolved from a mind-reader to portal of communication with the dead.

Modern Ouija boards were developed by inventor William Fuld. Fuld sold his patent to Parker Brothers in 1966. Ouija boards, as we recognize them today, look nothing like the original prototypes. The 20-25 million Ouija boards sold by Parker Brothers consist of a rectangular game board that is covered with a woodcut-style alphabet, the words yes, no, and good-bye, and the numbers 0-9. Also included with the “game” is a heart-shaped plastic planchette. The planchette is the ‘pointer’ that is supposed to glide over the board under the direction of supernatural forces and form comments and questions by pointing out questions and comments. Parker Brothers has marketed Ouija Boards under the tagline, “It’s only a game – isn’t it?”

Salt Lake City Legend: Lilly E. Gray – "Victim of the Beast 666"

The legend, a synopsis: In the Salt Lake City Cemetery, there is a gravestone for a woman named Lilly E. Gray with an inscription that reads, “VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666.” Many people have attempted to research this stone and Lilly, but strangely always hit a brick wall, as there is no information aside from her obituary, which states only that she died in a local hospital from natural causes.

Within the sublime Salt Lake City Cemetery, there is indeed a gravestone which has aroused interest and curiosity over the years, and has recently, with the advent of the internet, become the object of intrigue and fascination, amateur and oftentimes apathetic sleuthery. The stone is modest- a small, flat marker; the inscription is anything but: “VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666”

Cemetery legends abound. These stories, more often than not, especially when pertaining to specific gravestones and their inhabitants, tend to take on the attributes of the urban legend, mirroring societal fears, horror, and capitalizing on mystery; they usually have an associated thread of religious intrigue, including ‘devil worship’. The legends also tend to arise from the most benign origins.

Part of the fascination with the Lilly E. Gray mystery could be due to its “legend in reverse” quality. The impetus is its blatant-ness, its in-your-face refence to satan, then an unravelling reveals “nothing”. The strange lack of any story associated with Lily Gray’s gravestone is its biggest mystery and also the not very festive centerpiece its own developing, unique legend. The stone’s astonishing, provocative inscription begs for interpretation and meaning; where are all the suppositions? They are few, certainly. There are a couple websites that allude to the use of stone’s image within a report by investigators of satanic ritual abuse hysteria. There are a few jokes in a thread about Lilly’s husband perhaps being the ‘beast.’

Salt Lake City is home of the massive LDS-operated Family History Library, and the world’s geneaological research mecca–since the stone’s erection in 1958 no one has dug deeply enough to uncover even a minimal account of Lily Gray’s life and the origins of the inscription? When confronted with apparent true lunacy, evil, religious ferver, abuse, or implausible as it may be, ultimate victimhood at the hands of satan (as the stone literally implies) do we collectively turn our heads?

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is one of the most famous hauntings in Britain, this is mainly down to the strange form captured by photographers from Country Life magazine in 1936. Before that event the Brown Lady had been reported several times, but many of the written accounts vary considerably.

The hall dates from the 17th century, and has been in the hands of the Townsend family from that time. In some stories the apparition of the Brown Lady once haunted Houghton Hall, but came to Raynham with sister of Robert Wallpole, who married Viscount Townsend in 1713.

There have been a huge number of sightings of the so called Brown Lady since her death in 1726. She is believed to be Dorothy Walpole, the sister of Britain’s first ever Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole of Houghton Hall.

Those who have had the unfortunate experience of meeting her ghost describe it a more than frightening, it is understood that during her life she was a well liked, charming lady. Although this is so, it is believed that it was her obsession with flamboyant attire caused a rift between herself and her husband the second Marquess Townshend, (known fondly as Turnip-Townshend as it is he who introduced the vegetable to England.

The details of the pairs relationship beyond this are sketching and in fact two very different stories are often told.

It is known that Dorothy’s father was made guardian of Charles Townshend, when he was only 13 years old, so having grown up in each others company, when Dorothy was 15 and Charles 27 he fell deeply in love with her and wanted to marry her. Dorothy’s father refused to give his blessing and put a stop to the whole affair, as he feared he would be accused of wanting to gain the Townshend fortune and property.

It is at this point that two versions of Dorothys life are told, and no-one is certain which is the more accurate.

The least favourable version implies that Dorothy did not share Charles’ feelings towards her, but in fact found him repulsive!

However, the more romantic slant and far more interesting story claims her to have thrown herself into a life of wild parties and scandalous behaviour at a young age, and ultimately becoming the mistress of the well known, Lord Wharton.

During this time, Charles Townshend had married, but his wife sadly passed away in 1713, when he and Dorothy were united at last.

After a time the marriage became unhappy, and Charles deprived Dorothy of the care of her children who were put in hands of his mother.

Miserable without them and treated very poorly by Charles Dorothy is said to have been confined to her own quarters rooms, and within a while died at the age of 40.

Various versions of her death are quoted, including starvation, falling (or being pushed) down the grand staircase at Raynham Hall, the most popular location for the sighting of her ghost.

Lucia C Stone recorded the first reference to the ghost in 1835; the sighting took place at Christmas of the same year. Lord Charles Townsend had invited a number of guests to the hall for the Christmas festivities. Among them was a man called Colonel Loftus, who, with another guest called Hawkins, witnessed a figure in a brown dress. He also ran into the apparition on the main stairs. He described her as an aristocratic looking lady with one horrific feature: where her eyes should have been there were only empty sockets, highlighted in a face that glowed with an unearthly light. The captain drew a sketch of the apparition, and others also said that they had witnessed the ghost.

The next sighting was by a Captain Marryat (1792-1848), an author of sea novels, although no firm date is given for this encounter. In most accounts the captain has asked to stay in the haunted room because he believes that the haunting is the result of local smugglers. He is returning to his room with two companions, when they see a figure with a lantern coming towards them. They take refuge in a doorway, and the figure turns and grins at them in a “diabolical manner”. The captain, who is armed, looses off a shot, which passes straight through the figure and becomes lodged in the opposite wall. Fortunately for the Captain the figure is not a guest with a sense of humour in disguise, and the apparition vanishes.

The next publicised sighting was in 1926, when Lady Townsend admitted that her son and his friend had witnessed the ghost on the stairs. They identified the figure with the portrait of the lady hanging in the haunted room.

Ten years later in 1936, the most famous event occurred in the dubios history of the haunting. Two professional photographers, Captain Provand and his assistant Indre Shira, were taking photographs of the hall for ‘Country Life’ magazine. The date was the 19th September, and at 4.00pm that afternoon they were photographing the Hall’s main staircase. They had completed one exposure, and were preparing for another, when Shira saw a misty form ascending the stairs. He shouted to the captain that there was something on the stairs, and asked if the Captain was ready, he replied “yes” and took the cap off the lens, while Shira pressed the trigger for the flash light.

After this the captain came up from under the protective cloth, and asked what all the fuss was about. Shira explained that he had seen a shadowy, see-through figure on the stairs. When the negative was developed it showed the famous image. There were three witnesses to the negatives development, as Shira had wanted an independent observer to verify the event. He ran and got a chemist called Benjamin Jones, who managed the premises above which the development studio was located. A full account of the experience was published in Country Life magazine on the 26th of December 1936.

The photo was later examined by experts at the Country Life offices, where it was declared unlikely to have been tampered with. There have been a few detractors saying that Shira hoaxed the image by smearing grease on the lens or moving in front of the camera, but there is unlikely to be a definitive explanation for the photo. It is still held in the offices of Country Life.

There have been more recent stories suggesting the haunting has moved to a road between South and West Raynham, but this has not been verified. The spirit has not been reported at the hall since the photograph was taken.

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Underground Entrances

The Liyobaa Cave Entrances

After the conquest of South America by the Spanish Conquistadores, the Catholic priests who were attempting to convert the heathen Indians discovered a cave entrance to what they called “Hell.” This entrance has since been sealed off with tons of rubble, dirt and huge stones and boulders.

The village of Liyobaa (or to translate it, “The Cavern of Death”) was located in the province of Zapoteca, somewhere near the ancient village of Mictlan, or the “Village of the Underworld.”

The Cavern of Death was actually located in the last chamber of an eight-chamber building or temple. This temple had four rooms above the ground and four more important chambers built below the surface.

The high priests of the then-prevailing Indian religion conducted the ordinary ceremonies for the common man of Theozapotlan in the upper rooms. It was when they descended into the subsurface chambers that the secret and, to them, holy ceremonies, were conducted.

The first underground room was the one which was reserved for any human sacrifice. Its walls were lined with the images of the representations of their various “Gods.” A blood-stained stone altar in the center of the chamber served for the sacrifice of any human victim, whose still-beating heart would be torn from a screaming still-living body and offered to the lips of those same stone idols for their supposed repletion.

There was a second door in the first chamber which led to the second room. This was a crypt where the preserved bodies of all the deceased high priests reposed. The next door in this crypt led to the third underground vault, about the walls of which were the preserved bodies of all the former “Kings” of Theozapotlan. For, on the death of a king, his body was brought to this chamber and installed there with all the state and glory, as well as with many sacrifices to accompany him.

It was from this burial chamber of kings that the fourth and last underground room was accessible. A doorway in third room led into the last underground chamber which seems appropriately to have contained nothing but another entrance covered by a huge stone slab. I write “appropriately,” for the entrance to either HELL or the CAVES should be covered but unencumbered in the area about it for the benefit of those who might wish to leave rapidly and wisely. It was conceived by the Catholic Fathers of that day that this was an entrance to Hades; however, as we may well understand, it was an entrance to a Dero larder.

Through this doorway behind the stone slab were placed the bodies of all human sacrifices as well as the bodies of all the great lords and chieftains of the land who fell in battle. The bodies of those warriors were brought from far and wide to be thrown into this cave when they had been cut down in battles which were constantly being waged by these people.

Many of the common people, when debilitated by an incurable illness or oppressed by an unsupportable hardship, which made them seek death, would prevail upon the high priests to allow them to enter the door of death while still living. They believed that if they did so they would be the recipients of a very special afterlife.

The high priests would sometimes accept them as living sacrifices and after special ceremonies allow them to enter the “Cavern of Death” while still living. Needless to say, none ever returned to describe their experiences.

The Catholic priests, in order to convert the believers in this “myth” to Christianity, made arrangements to enter this subterranean door with a large retinue of torch holders and a long rope, which was tied to the stone slab door. They also took the precaution of having a large armed guard make sure that the door was not closed on them.

After they had lighted their torches and entered the door, it was discovered that they would have to descend several large steps. At the foot of the steps was a very wide stone-paved passageway with a high stone buttress on either side. The passageway led directly away from the steps into the distant bowels of the earth. The bones of the most recent arrivals, picked clean, lay before them as the passage seemed to continue without end. On each side of the buttressed path they could see into a large area which was a large labyrinth of stone pillars that seemed to hold up the very mountains which they knew they were beneath. As they advanced into the mountain, a putrid, dank air assailed their nostrils, serpents retreated from the light behind the shadows of the pillars in the distance.

They continued into the depths at a distance of about 40 meters when suddenly a strong cold wind began to blow about them. Still striving to continue, as their torches were extinguished rapidly, they took flight when all became dark, not only for the danger of the serpents, but also from strange sounds they could not place, but which were not being made by the members of their own party. Using the rope and the light of the torch one of the guards held in the doorway, out of the strong wind, the entire party rapidly retreated from this terrifying region.

When all the company had swiftly retreated to the ante-chamber of “Hell,” they rapidly replaced the large stone slab door. After this the head prelate gave orders to fill in all the underground chambers and seal off and erase all signs of the stairs to them, thus eradicating for all time this entrance to the Caves.

The Tunnels of South America

In Southern and Central America, as well as in Mexico, the ancient people did not deny the existence of subterranean caves, chambers or tunnels. An examination of the religious beliefs of these ancient civilizations will reveal this.

The Aztecs of Mexico had their dark, dreary and much-feared “Tlaxico” which was ruled by “Mictlan,” their god of death. The Mayas of Yucatan held a belief in the existence of underworlds. These they termed “Mitlan,” and they were icy cold as are most subterranean chambers or tunnels (for proof visit a large cavern in summer clothes and see how uncomfortable you are). These underworlds were presided over by “Ah Puch.” the Lord of Death. We also have mention of the underground in the Mayan sacred writings, the “Popol Vuh”; as well as in the “Book of Chilam of Chumayel.” Even some of the codices seem to refer to them.

Peru and Chile, when they were ruled by the Incas, also reveal knowledge of the underground. “Supai,” the god of death, had an underground dwelling, a much feared “Place of Darkness .” “Pachacamce,” the god of the earth, caused underground rumblings in subterranean places where huge stones evidently fell, hours after he had shaken the earth with violence.

A legend of the first Inca “Manco Capac” relates that he and his followers, the founders of the Inca real, came from underground caves, while the people of the time revered snakes because of “Urcaguay,” the god of the underground treasures. This god is depicted as a large snake whose tail has a hanging pendant from it, the head of a deer and many little gold chains. Even the “Comentarios Reales de los Incas” of Garciliasso de la Vega hints at the existence of the subterranean.

References to the tunnels have come down to us from information that the Conquistadores obtained. From some unknown source they had gathered information that the wealth of the Inca’s domain was stored in a vast underground tunnel or road, and Pizzaro held the Inca Atahuelpha prisoner in order to obtain his wealth, which, it was rumored, was stored in a vast subterranean tunnel that ran for many miles below the surface of the earth. The Inca, if he had the information regarding the entrance to this tunnel, never revealed it. The priests of the Sun God and the Inca’s wife determined, it is asserted, the eventual fate of the Inca by occult means. The knowledge that Pizzaro did not intend to spare the Inca Atahuelpha’s life caused them to seal up the entrance and hide it so well that it has never been found to this day.

A few Quincha Indians, who are pure descendants of the line of priests, are said to still have the knowledge of the location of the entrance to this tunnel. They are the appointed guardians of this escort, so it is rumored today in Peru.

Another source of tunnel information may be a huge monolith of perpendicular rock, which stands apart from its native habitat, the mountains. This rock is of lava, and how it was erected or who erected it is lost in the ages of antiquity, long before the Incas came on the scene. The huge monolith stands alone on the shore of Ila, a small town in the southern tip of Peru, not far from the Chilean border. The rock bears odd hieroglyphic marks carved upon it. Marks which only in the light of the setting sun create a cryptic group of symbols. It is said that these marks will reveal to the person able to read them and decipher the message correctly the location of a secret entrance to the tunnels,an entrance located, some researchers assert, in the fastness of the “Los Tres Picas,” the Three Peaks region. This is a triangular formation of mountain tops near the monolith in the Loa River section.

When Mme. Blavatsky visited Peru, she viewed and concurred with the information regarding the markings on the Ila monolith. She also asserted that information regarding the entrances to the tunnels had been graven in the walls of the “Sun Temple,” at Cusco. Information of a symbolized nature, but nevertheless information which revealed to the person, with the knowledge of the meaning of the symbols, the secret entrance to those tunnels which the priests of the “Sun God” knew about. It is reported that Mme. Blavatsky received a chart of the tunnels, from an old Indian, when she visited Lima. This chart now reposes in the Adyar, India, archives of the Theosophical Society.

Harold T. Wilkins, author of Mysteries of Ancient South America, also researched and inquired about the tunnels until he was able to conclude the following: Two underground roads leave the vicinity of Lima, Peru. One of these tunnels is a subterranean road to Cusco, almost 400 miles to the east. The other runs underground in a southern direction for more than 900 miles to the vicinity of Salar de Atacama. This is a large salt desert in Chile, the residue of the ocean water which was landlocked during an upheaval of the earth. The upheaval of cataclysm which created Lake Titicaca raised Huanuco high above its place on the shore line. For information about this event, see the section titled “Tiahuanacu in the Andes” of Imanuel Velikovsky’s Earth in Upheaval.

The Cordellarias domeyko, in that section of Chile, very evidently landlocked a great portion of the sea when it was raised. After the sea water evaporated, the vast salt waste, which is almost impossible to traverse, was left.

The tunnel, which has a entrance somewhere in the Los Tres Picos triangle, is also said to have a connection with this long southern underground road.

I conjecture that any continuation of the southern tunnel was broken during the cataclysm, which created the Andes mountain range. Such a continuation would have connected these ancient tunnels with the reputed Rainbow City center in the Antarctic.

I also conjecture that another event may have also happened during a shifting of the earth’s crust at that time. Some of my readers may be familiar with the fact that at least one tribe of Indians in the Southwestern United States has a legend of coming from South America.

This legend relates a story of many years ago. The forefathers of the tribe are said to have lived in a large city far to the south. The story even ties the stars of the sky with the Southern Cross. The town may have been Huanuaca before the earth shift which raised it above sea level. At any rate the legend asserts that the people of this town in the south, the forefathers of a tribe of American Indians, were driven from their homes by a much more hostile and fierce group of warriors. The remnants of those who fled wandered for a long, long time in underground passages which led to the north. These passages eventually led them to our Southwest, where they emerged and set up tribal life once again.

How these ancient Indians were able to see in the dark does not seem to have been taken into consideration. The question of how these ancient tunnels of the Atlan or Titan were illuminated has long been of interest to those who follow the Shaver Mystery. It has long been considered that the tunnels were lit by a type of atomic light.

Steve Brodie is once again a captive of the subterranean people, if he is still alive! I cannot ask him about this, and I regret that it did not come to mind during the all-to-brief period that I knew him many years ago. I do know, however, that he never mentioned any darkness except in relation to the weird outer space pictures he painted. Light is a funny thing: we accept it as our due and never notice it until it is missing. Perhaps some time in the future we may find one of the entrances to the caves and discover just how they are lighted.

The Maltese Cave Entrance

The Maltese Cave entrance is on the island of Malta. This island is the largest of a group of three islands, in the sea that divides Europe from Africa, the Mediterranean. The little Maltese islands lay well off the coast of a much larger island, Sicily, halfway between the Libyan seaport of Tripoli and Calabria of Italy’s Calabrese people who are located in the toe of the bootlike formation of Italy.

The three Maltese islands are composed of Gozo, Comino and Malta. They represent one of the smallest archipelagoes in the world, survivors of those remote days when continents were of a different shape. Those pre-cataclysm days when Atlantis and Mu may have existed, the days when there was a land bridge between Europe and Africa. Those days when the entire Mediterranean area was merely a series of large lakes.

Malta is the principle island of the three. It reaches a width of almost nine miles, while it is all of 17½ miles in length. Gozo is not as long as Malta is wide and Comino is almost a dot which separates them. Comino has at times boasted of a total population of 50 people.

Malta is the most southern island, 180 miles from the African coast. It was an ancient center of civilization at the time when the Phoenicians from Carthage invaded and began to rule it. At that time blood sacrifice was not new to the Maltese and they readily accepted the priests of Moloch as another name for “Baal,” the Sun or Fire God. These priests offered up human sacrifice to their god, one who rejoiced in the sacrifice of human victims and the outcries of the victims’ parents.

Since the time of the Carthaginians, Malta has had many rulers: Romans, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Castilians. Then France ruled the island for a short time before it became the British possession it now is.

However, with all this varied history, and regardless of the many nations who ruled them, the people of those islands still speak the ancient Canaanite, Semitic tongue, the speech of the Phoenicians, and the mother tongue of Queen Dido, who was the founder of Carthage. Malta was the birthplace of Carthage’s most famous citizen, the man who made Rome tremble at the height of his power: Hannibal— of the world’s greatest generals.

On the northeast shore of Malta there are a number of large bays. One of these is known as Grand Harbor. This bay has a point of land extending into it upon which the capital of the Maltese Islands, the city of Valletta, is built. A few miles inland from this town toward the south, overlooking the plain which leads to the shore, is a large plateau known as the Corradino. The little village of Casal Paula is built on this plateau, and from the village one can view Valletta, Grand Harbour, the plain leading to it, and also look out to the sea.

In this small village of Casal Paula during the year 1902 workmen, who were digging a well, literally fell into the earth. They had once again uncovered the outer room of the Maltese Cave entrance. Since the well was to be dug for a house which was on the main street named “Hal Saflieni,” and because this first cave was later discovered to be complex of caves, three of which were a series of chambers excavated out of solid rock on three even lower levels for each chamber, this entrance is known as the “Hypogeum of Hal Saflienti.” A hypogeum is the Latin name for an underground structure.

Later this series of underground rooms was discovered to have been located in the middle of an ancient neolithic village. From the construction of the entrance stones, it is now assumed that at certain times a human sacrifice was chained before the entrance. The entrance and the walls and ceilings of some of the passageways and rooms have been found to be decorated with red ochre primitive art designs, but when first discovered the three caves were crammed with as many as 30,000 skeletons of men, woman, and children. After all these bones were cleared out, the primitive murals were discovered. They took the forms of diamond shapes, as well as oblated and elongated ovals, all of which were joined together with wavy lines and whirls. These decorations had been created solely from the application of red ochre, by the most primitive of methods.

Once past the entrance, a narrow passageway leads down into the first room. It is in this room, that the “Oracle” may be found. The Oracle is a hemispherical hole in the wall, a which is lower than the mouth of an ordinary-sized man. It is about two feet in diameter, and one can speak into it. A curved projection carved out of the back of the cave then acts as a sounding board. The voice is amplified and caused to resound throughout all the other caves. It creates an effect which must have frightened the primitives into sacrificing many of the members of their tribe to the being who spoke with the “Voice of God.”

If you continue down through the narrow and low passageways, you come to another room. The center of this room has a circular stone altar with runnels on it, the use of which can only be guessed at. Carved in the walls of this room are many niches, the bases of which are like bunk beds. They have hollows scooped out for the heads and bodies, as well as the feet of four-foot-high individuals and some are even smaller.

Leading downward from this room is a small, narrow passageway, ending in another even larger underground room, which has narrow slit-like entrances into other small caves which surround it. One opening, however, is a window into another cave, the entrance to which is covered by a huge slab of stone. This window looks down into what was evidently a prison, but how beings only four feet tall were able to manipulate the huge stone slab must remain a mystery.

An opening in the wall opposite the entrance to this cave leads to a passage narrow and torturous, the entrance to the real caves. This passage ends on a pathway which extends along the side of a vast cleft in the earth, a pathway along the edge of a veritable chasm, a pathway which leads ever downward to the long underground tunnels and series of caves which are reputed to allow one to traverse the entire length of the island and even further.

Legend has it that these passageways at one time connected with the underground crypts from which the Catacombs of Rome were created. This may very well be true; for the reader must remember that the Mediterranean Sea was created after neolithic times by earthquakes and the shifting of the earth’s crust. Therefore, while the ancient tunnels may have existed, they might have been closed by cataclysms of this type, with the knowledge of them coming down to us only in legends.

The tunnels under the “Hypogeum” have been sealed off ever since a school teacher took 30 students into the caves and disappeared, guide and all. It was stated that the walls caved in on them. Search parties were never able to locate any trace of these people.

It has been asserted that for weeks the wailing and screaming of children was heard underground in different parts of the island, but no one could locate the source of the sound. If the walls caved in, why the cave-in could not be found and excavated to free the children remains a mystery.

How the children could live to scream for weeks later is another involved puzzle. At any rate, the underground entrance to the caves in Malta has been sealed off, and nobody is allowed to investigate the site.

The Chicago’s Devil Baby of Hull House

The most famous American Devil Baby has to be the Chicago’s Devil Baby of Hull House. At least, this is certainly the most widespread legend.

Hull House represented the life’s work of Nobel Prize winning philanthropist Jane Addams. It was a place envisioned as a stepping-stone for underprivileged and impoverished members of Chicago’s poor immigrant society. Because of Addams’ particular interest in suffrage and women’s and children’s rights, it was natural that immigrant women and mothers would be attracted to the beacon of Hull House.

Despite Addams’ fervent denials (she dedicated more than 40 pages to the legend and its impact on her life in her autobiography) the story persisted that Hull House was the home of a creature not of this earth.

Originally, the rumor was just a whisper among the large immigrant population of late 19th century Chicago. Mostly superstitious and uneducated, it is certain that they brought with them from their homelands many ethnic and cultural beliefs that shaped their perception of their new foreign world. However, the “facts” were no fabrication: Most sources agree that Jane Addams, out of charity, took in the female who would bear the burden that would plague the good woman for generations to come.

The mother of the Devil Baby, though nameless, is said to have fled to Hull House to escape a brutal marriage. This is a central part of the story and an important one: evidently the young immigrant woman found herself pregnant once again and the husband, already having too many mouths to feed on his meager income, is said to have ruthlessly beat his wife, all the while cursing the unborn child. When the young woman fled to the shelter of Hull House, she found an understanding matron who was prepared to take her in and to protect her through the difficult pregnancy.

And it was a difficult pregnancy, according to the written accounts of Hull House servants who rendered firsthand descriptions of the notorious events. The mother-to-be complained of unusual pains throughout the pregnancy, of hearing voices and of having vivid, frightening nightmares. Jane Addams and the Hull House physicians put this down to the tormented life that the woman had led prior to escaping to Hull House, exacerbated by the continuous efforts of her husband to gain access to her.

As the time of her delivery came due, the horrible nature of what she had carried and nurtured for nine months was finally revealed. A writhing monster child full of scales and reptilian coldness with gleaming, black eyes, clawed hands and feet, and the protrusions of tiny horns on its forehead.

Legend has it that the mother died on the spot, mercifully released from this world. But in an unexpected turn of events, it is said that Jane Addams was overcome with such compassion that it moved her to take the child into her care.

Thus the story grew up over the years, whispered in every quarter, that behind the walls of Hull House an evil was growing.

This infant grew to a child – a monstrous lump of a human-like creature – that prowled the darkness and had full run of the dreaded third storey of Hull House. It is said that the child would peer from the windows, envious of the other children with whom it was not allowed to associate. Children and other residents of Hull House often awoke in the night to strange scrabbling noises and furtive breathing near their faces, only to discover in the lamplight that they were completely alone.

Eventually, Jane Addams died, but the legend of the Devil Baby of Hull House lives on and even today passersby and visitors to the location report seeing the shadow of “something” childlike peering at them from the darkness.

  • Facts

A link between ghosts and cemeteries has a certain logic, but a connection between specters and a monument to good works is less explicable. Nevertheless, a demonic spirit supposedly haunts Hull House, site of the most famous settlement house in America.

In 1889, Jane Addams and another social worker took over the Hull mansion at 800 South Halsted and turned it into a community center. The house, now part of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, is currently a museum dedicated to Addams and her work.

Addams was a hardheaded, progressive reformer, a proud and determined do-gooder in an age sorely in need of one. She and her colleagues turned Hull House into a community center, supplying shelter, food and practical advice to the huge number of bewildered young immigrant women in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In the winter of 1913, Addams could have used some advice herself to deal with what must have seemed to her no-nonsense mind a case of mass hysteria. Women were streaming into Hull House with a very particular request: They wanted to see the Devil Baby. Stories were circulating throughout the city about a child born with scaly skin, horns, hooves and a tail. Some of the rumors included accounts of the young demon flying about the rooms of Hull House while social workers tried desperately to catch him. “He looks just like Satan himself,” a witness told newspaper reporters.

Depending on who told the story, the infant’s origins varied. Jewish women claimed he was the offspring of an unfeeling father with a large family of daughters who declared that he’d rather his wife give birth to a demon than to another baby girl. Italians said the Devil Baby’s mother was a God-fearing woman who had had the misfortune to marry an atheist. When the woman put a picture of Jesus on her wall, the husband angrily tore it down, saying that he’d rather have the devil himself in the house. And, according to this version, he got his wish. These and other variations ended with a desperate family taking the baby to Hull House and pleading for help.

In the beginning, Addams was furious at the rumors, which she tried to combat with appeals to common sense. Eventually, however, she worked out a sociological explanation that, to her way of thinking, explained the phenomenon. She noted that many purveyors of the Devil Baby story were older immigrant women, isolated in their new country, deprived of whatever domestic power and authority their age might have afforded them in their native villages. “The old women who came to visit the Devil Baby believed the story would secure them a hearing back home,” Addams reported, “and as they prepared themselves with every detail of it, their faces shone with timid satisfaction.”

But despite Addams’ sensible, secular debunking of the Devil Baby as the outcome of a pitiable bid for attention, many Chicagoans still believe that a strange creature of some sort really existed. Some suggest that the Devil Baby may simply have been a horribly deformed child, kept by the Hull House workers to shelter it from an unforgiving world. Other believers still claim to see a devilish little face peering out of one of the House’s second-floor windows.

Addams would doubtless have scoffed at such superstitious claptrap — or maybe not. In her diaries, she reported hearing strange noises coming from the upper rooms of the Hull House. She didn’t know what made the racket, but she habitually put large buckets of water at the top of the stairs to keep it — whatever it was — at bay.

Mary Celeste

Mary Celeste was launched in Nova Scotia in 1860. Her original name was “Amazon”. She was 103 ft overall displacing 280 tons and listed as a half-brig. Over the next 10 years she was involved in several accidents at sea and passed through a number of owners. Eventually she turned up at a New York salvage auction where she was purchased for $3,000. After extensive repairs she was put under American registry and renamed “Mary Celeste”.

The new captain of Mary Celeste was Benjamin Briggs, 37, a master with three previous commands. On November 7, 1872 the ship departed New York with Captain Briggs, his wife, young daughter and a crew of eight. The ship was loaded with 1700 barrels of raw American alcohol bound for Genoa, Italy. The captain, his family and crew were never seen again…

Ship found adrift on December 4, 1872 (some accounts say December 5), by the Dei Gratia, a bark sailing from New York to Gibraltar, and considered by many one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in the annals of maritime history.

When it was found, the Mary Celeste was sailing itself alone across the wide Atlantic. The ship was in first-class condition. Hull, masts, and sails were all sound. The cargo-barrels of alcohol were still lashed in place in the hold. There was plenty of food and water. When he examined the ship’s log, the captain of the Dei Gratia found that the last entry was on November 24. That would have been 10 days earlier, when the Mary Celeste had been passing north of St. Mary’s Island in the Azores — more than 400 miles west of where it was found. If it had been abandoned soon after that entry, the ship must have drifted unmanned and unsteered for a week and a half. Yet this could not have been. The Mary Celeste was found with its sails set to catch the wind coming over the starboard quarter: in other words, it was sailing on the starboard tack. The Dei Gratia had been following a similar course just behind. But throughout the 400 miles from the Azores, the Dei Gratia had been obligated to sail on the port tack. It seems impossible that the Mary Celeste could have reached the spot it did with its yards and sails set to starboard. Someone must have been working the ship for at least several days after the final log entry.

No one, from the 10 people that supposedly sailed aboard the Mary Celeste, including 7 crewmen and captain Benjamin Briggs’ wife and daughter, was ever found.

The explanation that seemed most reasonable at the time was the official one put out by the British and American authorities. This suggested that the crew had got at the alcohol, murdered the captain and his family, and then somehow escaped to another vessel. But the story does not really stand up. There were no visible signs of a struggle on board, and if the crew had escaped, some of them would surely have turned up later.

The Dei Gratia sights the abandoned Mary Celeste.

The yawl boat — a small four-oared boat carried over the main hatch — was missing, suggesting that at least some of the missing people could have left the Mary Celeste in it.

Dozens of theories have been put forward since then, ranging from attacking monsters from the deep and aliens kidnapping to nature’s wrath, piracy and mutiny. But no one has ever found any evidence or proof to confirm any of them. The only other evidence to what really happened may be the so called Fosdyk papers.

According to an article written by a schoolmaster named Howard Linford and published in 1913 (41 years after the Mary Celeste was found) in the Strand magazine of London, a well-educated and much-traveled employee of his named Abel Fosdyk, had left some papers and notes after his death explaining not only the fate of the crew but also the curious cut marks that were found in the bows of the Mary Celeste.
Fosdyk claimed that he had been a secret passenger on the ship’s last voyage and the only survivor of the tragedy that overtook it. Being a close friend of the captain, Fosdyk convinced Briggs to give him secret passage because, for some undisclosed reason, he had to leave America in a hurry. During the voyage Briggs had the ship’s carpenter build a special deck in the bow for his small daughter. It was the supporting struts for this deck that were slotted into the cuts in the bow planks.

One day, after a lengthy argument with the mate about how well a man could swim with his clothes on, Briggs leaped into the water and started swimming around the ship, as to prove his point. Couple of men followed while the rest of the crew watched from the deck. Suddenly, one of the sailors swimming around the bow gave a yell of agony. Everyone, including the captain’s wife and child, crowded onto the newly built deck which promptly collapsed under their combined weight. They all fell into the sea, where all were devoured by the sharks that had attacked the first seaman.

Being the only survivor of the shark attacks because of his luck of falling on top of the shattered decking, Fosdyk clung to it as the Mary Celeste drifted away. He floated for days until he was washed up half dead on the northwest coast of Africa.

The Fosdyk papers tell a neat tale. But they offer no solution to the the mystery of how the ship got to where it was found. And they are wrong on details that should not have escaped an educated man. Fosdyk says the Mary Celeste weighed 600 tons. In fact, the ship weighed a third of that. Fosdyk also says that the crewmen were English, when, in fact, they were mostly Dutch. And most of all, it seems highly improbable that anyone would go swimming around a ship that, according to the Dei Gratia evidence, must have been making several knots at the time. Bizarre as it is, no better explanation than Fosdyk’s has so far emerged. And after more than 120 years, it is unlikely to do so. The enigma of the ship that sailed itself seems destined to puzzle us forever (Parts of this text are excerpts from Reader’s Digest’s “Strange Stories, Amazing Facts”).

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